Yeah tell me one other game where you get to cut your own flesh and blood sister down. :p

Exactly. Another example of a solution can be found in Nintendo's Majora's Mask. Though the issue has not been mentioned in this thread, player death and continues are a large part of the problem in designing game narratives. Even Bioware's games suffer from this - the choices are great fun, but how does the emotional impact suffer when the player knows he can simply reload the game and correct his 'mistake'? Majora's Mask elegantly solves this issue by making failure - and the correction of that failure - part of the plot itself. The world is already doomed from the onset. Ad to that one of the most intricate and involving game worlds ever created, and a story that, though simple at first glance, is ripe with symbolism and surprising depth... Well, it's one of gaming's great, as far as I'm concerned. I can only hope that director Eiji Aonuma manages to strike gold again - Phantom Hourglass certainly gives me hope in that regard.

At any rate, as a student of game design, I can certainly see this article's point. Games should take advantage of the unique possibilities of the medium - only in that way can a truly great video game narrative be forged. I do not agree with his examples however. It is not, in my opinion, wrong for a game to use the story to provide a context - some of the early Final Fantasies did this to great effect, for instance in FF VI's Opera Scene, where the player is involved in many different ways in this one plot-event. It is a great example of the merging of gameplay and narrative (note: Majora's Mask and it's transformation masks also did this to great effect – Twilight Princess and it’s wolf, not so much). The silent protagonist is not the only solution to the problem - in fact, this archetype (like any other) only works if the plot is structured in such a way that the player can relate to what is happening in the game. Nintendo games are particularly good at this, perhaps because their stories are often quite simple. Still, it can be done, and if it is, it is an effective way to tell a story.

As an example of a game that failed at this, I can point to the (much acclaimed) Deus Ex. The game, in my opinion, was interesting and ambitious for its time, but crude and unfulfilling by today's standards. The plot itself is good, if nothing more, but the problem stems from the players dubious relation to the main character, JC Denton. JC is supposed to be "you" - you are given "choices" of what to do/say at certain points in the story, etc. The only problem is that these choices are nothing more than shallow smoke screens designed to fool the player into thinking he has some amount of control. In reality, there is only one path to take - you can't side with Page and Simmons no matter how much you want to. Another problem is that while JC remains loyal to UNATCO (spouting their propaganda left and right), the player knows from the beginning that he is working for the bad guys - and how’s that supposed to be immersive? And when the hero jumps ship to the resistance, he becomes equally ignorant of their schemes. JC simply does not come of as a blank slate for the player to fill in. Rather, he is that infuriatingly ignorant man that you're forced to play as - and that's exactly the kind of bad design that the author of the article objected to.

But like others have said, I think there is room for different kinds of games in this industry. While the greats will always use some technique to merge story and gameplay into one, the way this is done is (at this point) up to the individual designer.

MGS(especially 4) does that as well.  Despite what that article says.  The story actually compliments the gameplay in the series.  The Colonal or Otacon repeatly tell Snake to be careful and not to get caught in the codec conversations and cutscenes.  In the gameplay, you attempt to sneak pass the guards in order to avoid getting caught.  Am I wrong, or did that author of the article not actually play MGS?

No, I meant Xenosaga, maybe if you had played the 100+ hours that encompass the three games instead of just 3 you could have found that it features the most complex (and one of the best) story ever written

Poster argues that games fail at storytelling and does not reference Mass Effect at all?

Fail.

People give Ico and SotC a lot of flak for their rather austere attempt at story and gameplay but to me it makes a lot of sense.

You don't have to worry about the illusion of freedom if there is only one possible thing to do.

The gameplay is entirely designed around doing that one thing.

There is no one to distract you or even make you feel as if you have a choice in the matter making your goals and your avatars goal one in the same.

The desolate atmosphere reinforces the idea that you are alone and seek freedom from that (getting out of the castle or reviving your loved one)

Not to mention the wonderful emotive animations of our generally rather mute protagonist which helps us connect(not entirely mute they say a few things but not enough to distract us).

If game designers married the idea of the story with the gameplay and visuals it's possible to have a great involving experience regardless of very little plot being told because your struggle for freedom is the only portion of plot that matters in such a well designed context.  Not saying that all games must be that way just some arguments for why I believ that style works so well.

It's funny that some people complain about cutscenes as a method of telling stories in video games, yet you never see these people complain about the fact that there are boxes with characters and word ballons in them that advance the stories in comic books or that when you go to see movies or watch dramas and comedies on television, you see characters and actors on the screen that are playing out stories that you in no way have any control over that many times last up to two hours or more and are oftentimes not as interesting as the cutscenes in games like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, or the best Resident Evils.

I agree.  FF and MGS tend to have more interesting stories than a lot of the shit that Holywood seems put out these days.  The only mainstream movies released this year that are considered to be great by critics are The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and Wall-E.

You're still completely missing the point.

Let me see if an analogy will do the trick. Does it disturb you when you go to a theater, and you see all the action from one viewpoint? Now, does it disturb you when you see a movie and the camera never once moves? Why is it okay in one, but not the other?

Simple. A movie that follows the same rules as the stage is failing to take advantage of the opportunities before it, since it can do things that can't be done in theaters (and vice-versa! Theaters have aspects that can't be replicated by movies). This doesn't automatically mean that a movie that follows the same rules as a theater will automatically fail (indeed, the first movies were essentially recorded theater productions).

What it does mean is that a storyteller can get much more bang for the buck if he recognizes that his medium is not the same as any other, and that he should act accordingly. I've stated some examples above, and other people have done the same in this thread. But perhaps I should end this with a question for you: how much control do you, the viewer, have over the actors on the screen when you're watching T.V.? And how much do you have over the main character in a video game?

See the difference?

P.S. And before you get started, no, I do not completely agree with the author of this article. But you're still failing to grasp his point, so your counterpoints are falling most decidedly short of the mark.

The best stories in pc game history occurred back during the heyday of adventure games. Adventure games from the likes of Roberta Williams at Sierra-on-Line, and the developers of Lucas Arts' adventure titles and Infocom's adventure titles told the best stories in the history of PC gaming. These types of games haven't really been made in the last 15 years or so; however, games like MGS continue to tell stories much in a similar way.